Valkyrie Profile is a role-playing game based (loosely) on Norse Mythology. It was originally released on the PlayStation in 2000 by Tri Ace, and later re-released as Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth for the PSP in 2006

Ragnarok (the prophesied battle of gods that heralds The End of the World as We Know It) is approaching, and the god Odin requires a number of great soldiers to fight at his side. He assigns this divine task to Lenneth, one of his most loyal Valkyrie servants, who must descend to the mortal realm and sift through the souls of the recently-deceased. Once she has found a suitably pure-hearted soul, she must train it for battle and then send her new warrior to the armies of Valhalla.

However, unknown to Lenneth, there is more to her task than meets the eye: a number of sinister conspiracies are unfolding on both realms as the divine and the mortal manipulate events to achieve their own ends, and Lenneth must decide just who to trust and who to obey.

It was unique in that it had a turn-based battle system that relied on timing attacks well to increase combo hits and thus increase damage. Like other games developed by tri-Ace (like Star Ocean and Radiata Stories), it featured extensive voice acting, which resulted in several classic quotes amongst dedicated role-players.

This game provides examples of:

Animated Armor: Grey, his body seemingly destroyed by the time his wife performed a soul exchange, so his soul was fused into a suit of armor to allow him to live. His companions were later confused as to why he never removed his armor, not aware that he is now literally living armor.

Anyone Can Die: In fact, it's more shocking to see who doesn't. Hell, death is a prerequisite for joining the Valkyrie's party.

But Now I Must Go: The game is deliberately set up around this trope: you collect dead warriors to fight in your party, you level them up a bit, then you send them off to Valhalla and must make do without them. So Long, and Thanks for All the Gear factors into it as well; they rank better if you send them off with nicer equipment.

Call a Hit Point a "Smeerp": HP is called "Divine Materialization Energy" (or DME) in this game, because no one in the party actually has a material form, what with being dead and everything, so they're relying on Lenneth's powers to materialize.

Can't Catch Up: Although you do have items to combat this such as Expert Experience, Lenneth can't leave your party at all, so she'll get all the experience, whereas the rest of your party is likely to be changing depending on who you're training for Valhalla or what characters you have. Not to mention that since only the einherjar on the battlefield gain experience, the other characters often get stuck at whatever level they come at if you don't use them - which is especially brutal if you're playing on Hard difficulty, where everyone comes at level 1.

Suo and Gandar get hit particularly hard, because Gandar you can only get in chapter 8, and Suo only joins around Chapter 7.

Compressed Adaptation: The manga is only 12 chapters long. While it covers most vital events related to the Golden Ending, it only covers the recruitments of Arngrim, Jelanda, Belenus, Lawfer and Mystina. The latter's role is mostly diminished.

Crapsack World: Children are sold into slavery, monsters are everywhere, amoral or outright evil aristocrats and wizards are doing gods know what to innocent people... Let's face it. Life on Midgard sucks. It's practically a Mercy Kill that Ragnarok is right around the corner, and you could argue that death, and becoming Einherjar, is the best thing to happen to some of the Valkyrie's party.

Justified in that Odin had the Dragon Orb removed from the Palace of the Dragon, thus destabilizing Midgard and turning it into the Crapsack World you see in this game.

To get a general idea of how much this game embodies this trope, listen to this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbXfL5zh_mA This is the theme you hear for most of the cutscenes and many of the towns. It's that depressing.

Critical Existence Failure: Notable that if Lenneth is dead for three turns, the entire party ceases to exist and you get kicked back to the world map (or a Game Over if you die in the final dungeons). Justified in that it's Lenneth's energy that permits the other characters to exist in the real world.

Crutch Character: Freya, who at Level 2 does absurd amounts of damage and has absurd amounts of HP (though she dodges everything anyway), joins you for the first tutorial dungeon, until you reach the dungeon's boss, at which point she backs off and lets Lenneth's party take him on.

Culture Chop Suey: The world is heavily based on Norse Mythology, but the island of Hai-Lan has a distinctly Japanese feel, with katanas, samurai, and shrine maidens. The ruins of Akhetanan are based on Egyptian mythology.

Lezard: They say one should not speak unkindly of the dead, so I say, "Nice try."

Dead to Begin With: Being a deity tasked with preparing the souls of the dead for Ragnarok means you don't meet many living folks. Of all the party members in the game, only three temporary party members are not dead. One of them is a goddess, and one of the others is undead.

Defrosting Ice Queen: Valkyries are stripped of human emotion to keep from interrupting their duties. Lenneth eventually regains her human emotions and becomes incredibly compassionate. Previously, Lenneth and the other Valkyries are cold. Notably early on when she told Llewelyn that she is not a goddess of love.

Degraded Boss: Every boss except for the Einharjar bosses, Genevieve, the mummy king and the final set of bosses get reused as normal enemies. And even they get reused in the Seraphic Gate (although this is more so you can fill out your voice collection).

Department of Redundancy Department: During the Sacred Phase: "You wish to know the status of our Einherjar?" Immediately after choosing one to view: "You wish to know his/her status?"

Difficulty Spike: Lezard's tower can be a wake up call dungeon for most players who aim for the A ending or just want Mystina (since you will be forced to clear it in chapter 4). Not only it is a confusing maze, but it's also filled to the brim with Demonic Spiders. On the plus side, after you've been through it once, it's a good place to come back to for some grinding.

Digging Yourself Deeper: In Badrach's recruitment scene, Lenneth starts out collecting his soul for Hel to torment him for eternity; she asks if he's done anything good to warrant becoming an Einherjar, and Badrach, in a panic, starts listing off things like, "I helped a kidnapper! I sold women into slavery!" Lenneth is about three seconds away from booting his ass down to Nifleheim before he comes up with his one good deed, which he did out of spite anyway.

Disc One Nuke: The Element and Ether Scepters. They can do incredible damage: unfortunately, they break if you use Great Magic (and the unbreakable ones don't pop up until later in the game). But since they are much more powerful than standard staves, even using normal-version spells from the menu when they are equipped is enough to one-shot most encounters in chapters 1-3.

Menu Magic "Lightning Bolt" on all enemies with a strong staff like Dragonbane (assuming you could recruit Nanami in chapter 2) can also be considered as such for 2 chapters, without the disadvantages.

Attack items like "Holy Crystal" pretty much kill everything for the majority of the main game regardless of the user's skill and power, which can make even hard enemies and bosses a breeze.

Nanami can be recruited as early as chapter 2, and she comes with Lightning Bolt, which is a powerful spell. And returning to her village after recruiting her can net you Dragonbane, a powerful spellcaster weapon. It can't use Great Magic (which really inflicts damage) but it's unbreakable and has quite a powerful boost.

Lorenta comes with Mystic Cross, which is the most powerful magic in the game (And has the most powerful Great Magic), and at that point you might be able to just take out all of Lezard's health with it, given that in order to fight that boss you must recruit her.

Lezard's tower also has a couple items that, through alchemy, can give you very powerful weapons that you might be using until the end of the game. During the main story, this makes your two polearm users (Lawfer and Aelia) top tier characters, as well as Arngrim and maybe Kashell since you can get a heavy arms variation, too.

Doorstopper: According to Lezard, the Philosopher's Stone is the mother of all doorstoppers. He calls it a "ten-billion page codex".

Dramatic Wind: Most of the characters have this in their battle or victory poses. Mages are particularly prone to standing around looking drafty. For them, at least, it could be justified by them using their magic to look cool.

Eleventh Hour Ranger: Gandar, who you can only recruit in the last chapter and cannot send up to Valhalla at all. Suo and Lyseria may also count, since these two are probably the last einherjar aside from Gandar who you'll meet.

Good Bad Translation: "It shall be engraved upon your soul!" may have been "I shall annihilate your soul" in the original Japanese. As the original scripts are not available, and the difference between the two is a single character, this may be a case of Mis-blamed, however.

The Japanese line is actually "sono mi ni kizame" (その身に刻め), which literally means "it shall be engraved upon your body" - but the switch to "soul" in the English version can probably be attributed to localization liberties.

"STEP ON IT PUSH BUTTON", on the other hand...

Gratuitous English: The game's subtitle ("Should Deny the Divine Destiny of The Destinies"), and arguably "Purify Weird Soul". It's one reason they replaced it with "Soul Crush" in the latergames.

It's too bad that they changed it since its original form is a (potentially accidental) Genius Bonus: one of the archaic definitions of the word "weird" is something like "destiny." As all enemies not specifically stated to be otherwise are "undead" (in VP a catch-all for non-divine immortals; undead also are mentioned in the Golden Ending to exist outside of fate), and the act of defeating them places their souls back into the system, killing them could be called purifying their soul's weird.

Guide Dang It: The Golden Ending requirements are extremely counterintuitive, requiring you to perform several seemingly unrelated tasks in quick succession, getting one of your Karma Meters to a certain level, and removing a very clearly plot-relevant character from your party almost as quickly as you get him, without so much as a hint from the game. How did anyone find this out without a guide?

The "Seal Value" stat is especially bad: it's never mentioned in any of the tutorials, no one tells you what it does, and there are no hints as to how (or why) you make it go up or down. While most other steps involved in getting the Golden Ending are probably going to be followed by particularly thorough players (there's even a gentle nudge to send the proper character to Valhalla at the required time, since the requirements are a very close fit), the Seal Value requirements (let alone how one goes about meeting them) couldn't possibly be guessed.

Yumei is also half human, and thus can turn into either human or merfolk at will.

Hard Mode Perks: The dungeons exclusive to hard mode contain top tier equipment that just isn't available in normal or easy difficulties. An unintentional version is how you get characters at level 1, instead of at your current level, in hard mode, which lets you train them more effectively. Between these two points, Hard Mode can be significantly easier than normal if you know what you're doing, while Easy Mode can be much more difficult — and it doesn't let you get the Golden Ending, to boot.

Heel Realization: Badrach has something like this during his recruitment, when he seems to realize just how bad a guy he was. Also, in the A ending, Lenneth. Or rather, she realizes she's been working for a heel when she gets her memories back, and realizes just how little Odin cares for mortals.

Hopeless Boss Fight: Freya and Brahms are supposed to be this, as they're massively powerful and nearly immune to your attacks, but it is possible to beat them. Beating Freya doesn't change the outcome, but beating Brahms makes the game act as if you had decided not to fight him.

Infinity–1 Sword: The two best staves you can get in the regular game both sort of count. The Ether Scepters have the highest magic power in the game, and allow for Great Magic, but will break 1/3 of the time they're used. The Unicorn Horns allow for Great Magic and are unbreakable, but their magic power is slightly weaker than the Ether Scepters.

Gandar, too; he was saved from being sent to Nifleheim because Odin needed his skills. This probably gave you a hint that Odin is not that nice.

Alternatively, it could be that Odin just didn't want Hel to get her hands on him.

Karma Meter: Two of them. One measures how well you're doing your job, the other is how well the seal on Lenneth's memories is holding up.

The second value also determines her battle quotes. If the Seal is high, she's gung-ho and ready to fight. If it's low, she starts questioning what she's really fighting for, and wonders whether there's a point to all the fighting.

Kill the Poor: Present in Lucian's backstory. He was part a of a band of thieves that steals for the poor. Consequently, in retribution, soldiers were sent to kill not only the thieves but also the rest of the slum's dwellers.

Large Ham: The invocations on about 75% of the Purify Weird Soul moves. Plus, there's several of Lenneth's In the Name of the Moon speeches to villains. To little surprise, Loki does this as well in the path to the best ending. You could argue that the final boss battle is over the right to become the patron God/Goddess of Ham.

All the spell throwers when they cast Great Magic, and a large number of Menu Magics as well; Jelanda crying out "Guard Reinforce!!" is something special.

Leaked Experience: Completing puzzles and finishing dungeons gives you Story Experience, which is pooled in the Exp Orb. You can freely distribute this to any of the characters at your discretion to help them catch up.

Levels Take Flight: The Celestial Castle. It's not long, but an unavoidable section of it is tiny platforms with nothing below them, and booby-trapped treasure chests that explode and knock you off the edges. Those rooms also feature flying enemies that will force you into battle, after which you will fall unless you have the presence of mind to re-grab onto the ropes you're supposed to use to cross the gaps. The game has a time limit, and every time you fall off you end up outside, and have to spend more time going in again.

Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards: Played through. Mages are okay at first, but once you get staves that allows them to use great magic without it breaking, they'll soon start ruining bosses. Heavy Arms and Lancers can eventually get a near end-game quality weapon with a little searching in chapter four, making them (with the exception of Grey) potentially powerful. Archers, meanwhile, tend to lag behind, majorly. With a few exceptions (Janus and Lenneth, who for a while is more powerful with a bow in her hands), they're utterly worthless for anything beyond increasing the combo gauge.

In the end, mages and the other warriors (again, save archers) can get more unique in terms of attacks, but all of the mages you get have the same pool of magic and can all learn the same spells; no spell is unique to one sorcerer. Also, the power level of each mage is fixed and generally increases in the order you get them in (Jelanda is the weakest, then the three sorceresses from Yamato, Lorenta, Mystina, Lyseria, and Gandar is the most powerful mage in-game).

Loads and Loads of Characters: All the different Einherjar, with their unique backstories and recruitment scenes, are the focus of the bulk of gameplay. The second game features even more of them, though their story significance is reduced significantly, to the point where their whole backgrounds are reduced to All There in the Manual status. The third game features fewer recruitable characters, but their stories are pushed back to the forefront.

Lost Forever: Odin demands that you give up any items you find at the end of dungeons. Giving them up takes away the item but gives a boost to the Karma Meter and a bucket of exp. Keeping them drops the meter by five times the amount it would have risen.

Actually, sometimes if you have a good rating, Freya give some of them back during sacred phase.

Thankfully, as long as you send up at least one person in each chapter, your rating gets reset to 100 (or 98 if you don't have the ring on) on sacred phases, so unless you purposefully clear out 5+ dungeons in a single chapter (which is only really possible if you skip some of them over in a previous chapter) and keep every item, you don't have to give up any of them.

Also, if you transfer Lyseria, you WILL NOT get her back (unlike most other einherjar) due to a glitch.

Then again, though, that's if you actually want her; she can be good, but a lot of people decide that since Mystina's at a much higher level, that it's not worth it to use anyone but her.

In the Seraphic Gate, failing to juggle an item out of Lezard will make you miss one of the best swords in the game.

Love Makes You Evil: Not that Lezard was a nice guy before, what with the necromancy and all, but falling for Lenneth makes him do all kinds of horrors.

And later, Belenus' wife after her death made a pact with a vampire. Even though he is above doing any of those, it's mostly due to his loneliness after most of his family died.

Mad Scientist: Lezard, though he's more of a mad wizard with traits of a mad scientist.

Man of a Thousand Voices: Well, not quite, but the English version of the game uses eleven voice actors (all from [[4KidsEntertainment TAJ Productions]], which in general has a small acting pool) to voice the Loads and Loads of Characters, including the extra voices heard during sequences when Lenneth picks up a new Einherjar. The most used actress is Tara Jayne; she voices all three of the sorceresses from Hai-Lan, the boy archer Llewelyn, and most of the secondary female voices heard during Spiritual Concentration sequences. Eric Stuart has the fewest characters voiced, but they differ significantly from each other vocally (Lucian sounds like Brock, while Grey has a deep, hammier voice).

Non-Combat EXP: The game has Event Experience, which is received at the ends of dungeons and after triggering events while exploring dungeons. It's usually pretty meager in comparison with the experience you get from killing all the stuff in the dungeons, but has the advantage of being able to be divided as you wish among your characters, allowing you to stockpile it and level up weak characters who'd have a difficult time surviving combat.

Non-Indicative Difficulty: Though the enemies are stronger in hard mode, a few other factors conspire to make it easier than Easy and Normal. First, while all the recruited characters start at level 1, in practice this means that you get that many more chances to exploit equipment that gives bonuses to DME and CP at each level up. Second, more dungeons means more battles and both more regular experience and Non-Combat EXP. Third, the hard-mode-exclusive dungeons hold most of the game's really strong equipment. As a result, characters in a hard run-through get more experience in total, have more health at the same level, learn stat-boosting skills faster, and are using near Game Breaker equipment unavailable to their easy/normal mode counterparts.

Off Model: Minor version in the PSP rerelease, by virtue of the CGI cutscenes. Lenneth's "Meril" disguise is clearly wearing a different dress depending on whether you see her in sprite form or CGI note for example, the sprite looks more eastern inspired, while the CGI form is a more European style, and when Jelanda is transformed into a monster, the CGI cutscene shows her in her pinkPimped-Out Dress, while the sprite shown just before is the much simpler outfit she wears as an einherjar.

Outside-the-Box Tactic: X-slayer weapons are terrible except against X, in which case they do massive damage, usually resulting in a kill in one to three hits. It can make certain bosses incredibly easy. The same applies to weapons with [Insert Element]/DEATH in its description. Even one of the final bosses will fall in one hit because of this.

Overshadowed by Awesome: Obviously happens to those that Can't Catch Up. Several champions you get early in the game, like Belenus, Janus, and Jun also aren't badnote Janus is considered the only useful archer in the game besides Lenneth., but they're often sent up to Valhalla, since in the early chapters of the game, you really don't have much of a choice.

This also happens to many sorceresses, and Gandar. Mystina's considered the top tier sorceress, and since you only really need one, a lot of people don't bother with the others until Freya asks for you to send someone up to Valhalla. However, Lorenta and Nanami come with a Disc One Nuke, and it's very likely you'll get Might Reinforce with Shiho first.

Ranged Emergency Weapon: Lenneth's ability to equip bows. While there's no enemies that are impossible to engage in melee range, an early boss battle (and some later battles) pits the party against a powerful mage protected by damage-soaking goons. The game advises you to switch Lenneth to a bow to take out the mage first, just in case you don't have a dedicated archer for one reason or another.

Well, granted; you might have one because the other archer you have falls into Tier-Induced Scrappy territory, and Lenneth is better with bows than with swords for most of the game.

Really Dead Montage: Nearly every character that joins Lenneth's party gets one of these. Yumei has a particularly long one, which is either a Tear Jerker or simply wangsty depending on the player.

Sadly Mythtaken: The game is nominally based on Norse mythology. The first wince-worthy moment comes about halfway into the introduction, when the writer fails to have researched which Norse gods are Aesir and which are Vanir. Odin (an Aesir) is telling Lenneth Valkyrie (the player character, who works for Odin) and Freya (your main point of contact among the gods) how war with the Vanir appears to be inevitable — but Freya is a Vanir in the original myths!

Also of note is that the myth of Ragnarok concerns a battle between the gods and the Jotuns, a race of giants, not the Vanir. In the myths, the Aesir and Vanir waged war at one point, but made peace long before Ragnarok was supposed to happen.

Oddly, the Vanir's stronghold in the B ending is still called Jotunheim.

Also, the so-called Vanir in the game are obviously giants (just look at how much taller they are than Lenneth as you run through Jotunheim), and during the lead-up to the A ending, Freya calls their enemies "giants." Just do a mental search-and-replace whenever you see the word Vanir, and swap in Jotun instead; it makes the game a bit closer to the actual myths.

Even odder, Surt, the final boss in the B ending, is the king of the fire giants. His stronghold is made of ice.

There is a throwaway line in the description for one dungeon (the Citadel of Flame) that states that Surt is the lord of Muspelheim, and that he has a volcano named for him. That makes the ice stronghold make even less sense; why didn't the designers just set the last battle there?

There were either nine valkyries, or any number; there were never only three, and they could all be active at once (i.e. they didn't share one body). They also did not rule over fate itself. The valkyries in this game seem to have been combined with the Norns.

Niflheim is treated as the absolute lowest root of Yggdrasil (for a simpler comparison, the equivalent to the Judeo-Christian Hell)and as the land of the dead in the game. In the actual mythos, the realm of Hel is the actual land of the dead and the absolute lowest branch. Sources vary on Niflheim's position on the tree; some have it in the middle branches along with Midgard, while some put it on the lower branches with Hel and Svartalfheim (the land of dwarves). Similarly, Jotunheim, the land of giants, also is put on the middle or low branches in various sources.

Although, you only need 95% of the voice clips, as the remaining 5% will then be filled in automatically.

Selfless Wish: Deconstructed with Yumei's story. Fuyuki gets a chance to wish for a big boat, but instead wishes for Yumei to be with her parents. Unfortunately, her parents are already dead...

Shout-Out: Lezard is often taken for a Shout-Out of Harry Potter. He often mentions "The Philosopher's Stone" and his secret lab is called the "Chamber of Secrets". Didn't help he looks just like him, except for the hair. However, since VP was released in 1999 and the first novel was only written in English in 1997 (and the series didn't really take off until at least a few years after that) the resemblance is likely a coincidence.

Slouch of Villainy: Odin's favorite position while calmly contemplating his evil plans in the second game. It's notable that the plan goes perfectly while he's slouching magnificently. It all falls apart once he gets up out of the chair.

The Smurfette Principle: Inverted; Gandar is the only recruitable male sorcerer in the game, not counting the one battle where Lezard fights with you. Aelia is the only female lancer, but there are only two of those (the other being Lawfer), and Lenneth can be a light swordsman like Jayle.

Sole Survivor: Celia ends up being the last alive out of her mercenary group; Arngrim, Lawfer, Aelia, and Kashell die earlier in the game (the lattermost right in front of her), while even the man she sought to confront and possibly kill ends up acting as an Almost Dead Guy through a failed attempt at self-sacrifice, living long enough to give just an apology. Celia even mentions two other people not detailed by the game, presumed dead.

Also, Lezard Valeth sacrifices the Philosopher's Stone in order to survive Ragnarok.

Soul Jar: Valkyries are stored within the bodies of humans until Odin needs them.

Stripperiffic: Freya is the one female who stands out. She shows a lot of leg, but seeing as she is one of the most powerful gods, she doesn't really have to worry about getting damage. Aelia is half an example—she's wearing full-body plate mail from her waist up, but has her thighs completely exposed, and her official art even has a Panty Shot. Amusingly, the straightest example in the game is male; Arngrim wears gauntlets and shoulderpads but no shirt.

The Tape Knew You Would Say That: Sort of. In the Golden Ending, Loki wipes out your party initially, then smuggly scoffs that even the Demon Sword Levantine's power didn't help the Valkyrie, with the game apparently assuming that you'd immediately equip Valkyrie with the Infinity–1 Sword the second you got a hold of it.

Teleporters and Transporters: Teleportation magic is an ancient, lost, and powerful magic. The fact that Lezard can pull it off is used as a testament to his ability.

The computer is only cheating a little bit; purple gems (dropped when an enemy is hit while knocked down) reduce the wait time your characters suffer after using their own PWS moves. With sufficient skill (plus abusing the extra hits Reverie gives you, which is why its use with melee fighters is a Game Breaker; similar abuse comes from using Lucian, whose status as top-tier is due almost exclusively to one of his attacks, Shining Bolt, hitting thirteen times in an instant, pulling thirteen purple gems out of one button-press), you can string a large enough combo that you too can dish out a full set of PWS moves, including using one of the really hefty Great Magic spells like Meteor Swarm or Celestial Star, every turn. The only cheating involved is that the computer doesn't have to string together a large combo with plenty of midair hits.

There Are No Tents: You have a limited amount of time to adventure before Ragnarok, and healing costs turns. It's generally more economical to use a healing spell in battle.

Training Dummy: Accessed from the party menu, immortal versions of the first monsters in the game can be practiced on in order to figure out how to do your combos effectively in order to get out your "Purify Weird Soul" moves. Unfortunately, it's a feature that's lacking in Valkyrie Profile 2 Silmeria.

Trick Boss: The Final Boss in the A ending, Loki, can only be substantially harmed by Valkyrie's attacks. The rest of the party is pretty much just there to build up the combo meter for her Purify Weird Soul attack.

If you use Sap Guard on him first, everyone in your party can make a significant dent on him (Though Valkyrie will still deal the most damage)

Also, if you have Unicorn horn, Mystic Stars can really take a huge chunk of his HP off, but again, not as much as Valkyrie.

Underground Monkey: Played straight and averted with some monsters. Some have a different color scheme to denote they're higher-powered versions of earlier ones, while others look exactly the same, even though they're much more powerful.

Underrated And Overleveled: Averted in Hard Mode, where all the einherjar start at level 1, but played very straight in Normal and Easy modes. While Arngrim, the One-Man ArmyGutsExpy, starts at level 1 because he's one of the two first recruits, other characters who were explicitly weaker than he was in life start at higher levels due to joining in later chapters. In general, the backstories of the einherjar Valkyrie recruits do nothing to justify their higher and higher starting levels.

Voluntary Shapeshifting: Yumei can switch between mermaid or human form at will. Aelia also changes form when doing her PWS.

Weapon of X-Slaying: There's a handful of weapons named [blank]slayer, which when used will kill whatever enemy of that type it hits in one shot. They tend to be breakable, making them Too Awesome to Use except for against bosses. But, because of a bug in the way breakable weapons are trackednote It only checks when the enemy's turn comes up, so if you finish the boss off, it won't check., they can easily last you the whole game.

There's another subset of weapons that have a Death effect based around the elemental weaknesses of an enemy rather than the type. One such sword, acquired about half-way through the game, turns the penultimate boss into a Curb-Stomp Battle for your side.

Lawfer's introduction story does not conclude with Lawfer's death, unlike almost every other playable character in the game, yet he ends up an Einherjar after it's over anyways. How the hell did he die?

Lenneth hears the name of a vampire early that had indirectly resulted in the death of Belenus, one of the first characters you recruit. She then commits this to memory to look out for them, but you never fight them. It's certainly not Genevieve (who herself qualifies in Normal mode, since the final battle with her is in a Hard mode exclusive dungeon).

Celia's fate is never detailed; it's likely that she died during Ragnarok. Granted, there are a lot of other mortals whose fate is never explained, but you see Celia in so many recruitment scenes that it seems almost like you'll get them eventually!

What Is This Thing You Call Love?: Lenneth just doesn't seem to get the motivations of some of the mortals, especially the ones who seem to do illogical things for love.

Taking things even further is the fact that the region and the nationality is "Yamato", a Japanese-inspired name ("Yamato" itself being literally an old name for Japan), but the primary village that Lenneth can visit is "Hai-Lan", an obviously Chinese name.

Xanatos Gambit: In order to get rid of Jelanda, Lombert kidnaps her and pays two mercenaries to carry her to Villnore. Then, he sends a few soldiers to save Jelanda and gives them a "medicine" (which is, in fact, Ghoul Powder). If the mercenaries manage to get to Villnore, Lombert wins, if the soldiers catch up with them, they give Jelanda the "medicine", she turns into a monster and dies, and Lombert still wins.

You Kill It, You Bought It: Lenneth is personally responsible for killing no less than two souls that join her, and a few more die due to her actions.

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